Source: Jim Mac Laughlin

I'm hovering for a while now over the term "nation building" and the importance of "creating" states from scratch that has arised in the recent past in Iraq and Afghanistan. For me this term not only covers Iraq but the many countries that have made their way from white spots on the map to successful economies that include success stories like Dubai, Singapore, Taiwan, Estonia, Czechoslovakia or Slovenijia.

In my view building up a state (well a small one) is besides much political theatre the same task as building up a company. The basics of a successful state are really much easier than often discussed. Good and simple laws, good execution of law, valuing entrepreneurship and economic freedom are not such a difficult task. Clearly nation building goes over a long-term and can never be as straightforward as in a hierarchical company but it's much easier as often thought.

My personal expectation is that nation building will be a task that we will see much more often than before 1990. Many countries of the former Soviet side of the iron curtain have already seen a sweeping change but many countries in the Middle East and Africa will have the chance to recover from being a failed state.

Getting good material on nation building has been a difficult task for me, but now I found a great piece the Andrew from Reuven Brenner. Reuven has introduced a new angle describing nations with/ without success. He uses the "mobile society" for showcasing the pragmatic and flexible on one side and the "immobile society" on the other.

"It is easy to criticize both grandiose thesis and narrow ones. To come up with a different way of perceiving the events and offer solutions is a bit harder. Yet this brief does just that. It shows that today's conflict between Islamic groups and the West, as well as within Islamic societies, can be viewed as one between "mobile" and "immobile" civilizations, whose members can be found in every society. What distinguishes the US is that it has far more people sharing the outlook of a "mobile civilization" than any other country. And what characterizes many Islamic countries is that they have a large number of people sharing the values of an "immobile" civilization. "Relativist" orthodoxy notwithstanding, one point I make is that although one can understand the values and ideals of "immobile societies", as fitting certain situations, there cannot be a compromise between these two civilizations. Today's circumstances - demographic in particular - require moves toward "mobility".